the distance between us (is littered with the ruins you left behind)
by Sandrine Shaw
Summary: Rachel and Bass, they're the explosions. They're fire and destruction, they'll leaves ashes and ruins in their wake, and Miles is the one who lit the fuse.


**the distance between us (is littered with the ruins you left behind)**  
by Sandrine Shaw

Here's what she remembers about Philly:

The anger and the fear and the crushing loneliness. The knowledge that Miles hadn't just turned his back on Bass, he had left her behind as well.

General Sebastian Monroe, his uniform as well-pressed as ever but the cool, superior attitude ruffled for once, a wild look in his eyes – the one that said, _someone pulled the rug out from under my feet_ and I lost the one person who mattered to me. She never wanted to relate to Bass, never wanted to feel anything akin to sympathy for him, but how could she not when she knew so well what he was going through because it was exactly the same for her?

So she doesn't throw the wine in his face when they have dinner that night, doesn't take up the blunt knife and try to gut him with it. Doesn't avert her gaze and snap a sharp little jibe at him when his eyes linger on her.

In the morning, she will tell herself that she did it so she can use it against him later. That it was merely means to an end, a way to soften his attitude towards her, to make him trust her, leave him open to attack. Truth is, that night, she doesn't consider any of those reasons, and when she kisses him, all she wants is to fill the Miles-shaped hole in their hearts.

* * *

What he remembers about Philly:

The buzz of the alcohol dulling his senses, but doing nothing to ease the pain because Miles is _gone_, and he won't be back and no amount of drink will change that.

Rachel, for once missing some of her sharp edges. Her comments are less derisive and vicious, her attitude less haughty and forbidding, turning her into the Rachel he once knew before it all went to hell. He refills her glass as quickly as he refills his own. The emptier the bottle gets, the more genuine her smile grows, and for a moment it's almost enough to distract him from the fact that his heart has been ripped right out of his chest.

He's too drunk to tell which of them makes the first move, if he reaches for her or if she's the one who slides into his lap unprompted.

There's anger in the kiss, but most of it is desperation and need, hands frantically tearing at clothes, body arching against each other. Skin on skin, every low, broken moan and every touch spelling _Miles, Miles, Miles_.

* * *

Everything about Monroe grates on her nerves. That he's alive when Danny and Ben are long gone. The way he acts like he doesn't have the blood of thousands of people on his hands. His cocksure smile, his trigger-happy fingers, the total lack of concern about leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake. How he got Miles to soften towards him, their friendship rising once more like a phoenix from its broken, blackened ashes, as if Miles had forgotten that it wasn't so long ago that he held a weapon at Bass' head with the full intention to pull the trigger. The easy banter Monroe shares with Charlie, who seems more comfortable around the man she'd once sworn to kill than around her own mother. The way Charlie looks at him when she thinks no one is watching her.

He drives Rachel mad, makes her want to claw at his face and tear him open, makes her want to take a knife and sink it deep into his black, jaded heart. And she would – she would have killed him a long time ago, would have left him to die during the parody that was his execution or later in Mexico if she hadn't know that it would have left Miles in a world of pain. Would have devastated Charlie in ways Rachel doesn't understand or even want to.

* * *

When he grabs her, he doesn't mean to kiss her.

He wants to –

He doesn't know what he wants. To prove a point, maybe. To hurt her. To remind her that it wasn't always like this between them, hatred and rage and bitter jealousy, that there was once something else.

When she pushes him off, unsubtly shifting her weapon and telling him to stay the hell away from her, he's breathing hard and staring at her and he can't think of one reason why _the fuck_ he would do such a thing as kiss her.

They continue their search for Miles in silence, a safe distance between them. (There's no such thing as a _safe_ distance for them, not as long as they're still both walking this earth.)

* * *

Kneeling in the dirt with Miles' bloody jacket in her hands, her fingers coated in cold, sticky red and Bass crouching in front of her, telling her that no matter what the evidence at hand suggests, Miles isn't – _can't be_ – dead, Rachel realizes one thing: losing Miles again will break Monroe, will break him for good this time. She can't risk that, can't have Monroe losing whatever's left of his conscience.

"That son of a bitch is too stubborn to die," Bass says, and the edge of desperation in his tone cuts her wide open.

She agrees, for his sake. But the moment she forces her lips into a grim smile and says the words, she feels something like hope swelling up in her chest. Stupid, naïve. There's too much blood and Miles can't have survived that. She shoves that knowledge away into the far back of her mind and closes the door on it.

If Monroe wants to be delusional over Miles, she can be delusional with him. That, at least, they have in common.

* * *

"We'll find him," Rachel assures him.

They're back in Willoughby, getting new supplies and extra ammo. The plan is to take up their search again in the morning. _Wasted time_, part of him thinks – the emotional, raging part that need Miles like he needs air to breathe. The soldier in him knows that waiting until first light is the right call, that going out in the dark of the night won't get them anywhere but caught in a Patriot trap.

"I know," he says, even though he doesn't know, isn't sure that they will find Miles at all, even less sure that they won't just find his dead, bled-out body somewhere in a ditch.

When he reaches for the bottle on table again, Rachel halts his hand. Her fingers close around his over the cool glass of the bottle, and they're warm and steady and firm. "Stop that. You need to be sharp tomorrow morning, not hungover and half-drunk."

Her condescension, the sheer audacity of telling him what to do, makes fiery anger rise in his veins like poison. Furiously, he pushes himself to his feet, the chair clattering harshly to the floor behind him. Rachel doesn't flinch. Her grip on his hand doesn't waver.

"Don't –" he begins, and there's a warning and a threat waiting on his tongue, but she's staring him down like nothing he will say is going to faze her, and the words die on his lips.

She's standing too close and he's too drunk, and the _déjà-vu_ punches him in the gut like a fist.

He lets go of the bottle and tangles his hand in her hair, and this time, she doesn't struggle. She doesn't pull away when he kisses her but meets him halfway, and her mouth against his is like a raging hurricane, hungry and destructive, a force of nature.

He pushes closer, trying to chase the taste of Miles on her lips.

She was right about one thing, the other day: he can't bear to be alone. Can't bear to be _without Miles_, specifically.

There's a secret he knows about her, though: neither can she. She may play a good game and know how to put on a brave face, but when it comes down to it, she's so afraid of losing people that she once ended the world just to save one little boy. And then she gave up her freedom, her family, just so she could be with Miles.

And here's the irony, the part that turns this story into a tragedy: Miles keeps leaving. Leaving her, leaving Bass, walking away without a backward glance like the hero of an action movie from the nineties who calmly takes off while the bombs go off in the background. Rachel and Bass, they're the explosions. They're fire and destruction, they'll leaves ashes and ruins in their wake, and Miles is the one who lit the fuse.

* * *

She can't sleep that night.

Can't stop imagining Miles dead in a pool of blood somewhere, or in a shallow grave put by one of the rangers. Can't stop imagining about what's going to happen if they find him dead or not find him at all. (Bass will snap and go on a killing spree, and their sorry excuse for a revolution will crumple before it even started, and she... she might go and end the world all over again.)

Bass is snoring. It must be easier to find sleep when you don't have a conscience, she thinks viciously, even though she knows that the alcohol probably did its part. He sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning, muttering words and names she tries not to hear. It would be easy enough to wake him from his nightmare with a gentle shake or a hand on his shoulder, but Rachel doesn't have that little bit of kindness left for him, not even when his restlessness is keeping her away. Doesn't have that kindness left for herself either.

She meant every word she said to him earlier today. And now she looks at him, Bass Monroe, lying next to her, mere inches between their bodies, and she thinks, _What have I done?_

What _the hell_ has she done?

(Truth is: it's easier to focus on this – on the guilt and the shame and the knowledge that once can be explained away but twice is _something_, and there must be a reason that whenever they lose Miles, Bass and her are drawn together like moths bereft of their flame – easier to tear herself up over this than think about what might have happened to Miles out there, alone and injured and surrounded by enemies.)

Eventually, she falls asleep. She dreams of Ben, who throws brutal accusations her way, all of them true. She looks at him and quietly says, _If I'd never married you, none of this would have happened. No Danny, no nanotech, no Blackout. I could have been happy._ Even her dream self knows that it's a horrible thing to say.

* * *

Their bodies are tangled together when he wakes up, and for a moment he thinks he's back in Philadelphia – him the fearsome leader of the Republic and Rachel his uncooperative prisoner and Miles' betrayal a fresh wound all over again – before he takes in the shabby tent, the sounds of the camp outside and remembers where they are. Remembers what happened and what led them here, that Miles is lost somewhere, wounded, needing help.

He shakes Rachel awake. "Come on. We need to get going," he says, urgently, watching recognition dawn on her face, a quick flash of shame and repulsion and determination.

He turns away, gets dressed in a silence that's less awkward than he expected it to be and oddly companionable. She takes the weapons he hands her, and neither of them flinches when their fingers brush.

As she falls into step beside him there is, suddenly and unexpectedly, the sense that they're in this together.

* * *

Miles stumbles towards them, dirty and bloody and bruised, halfway between Willoughby and where they found the broken wagon.

"You're late," he quips, because even when he's half-dead, he's still an insufferable smartass. "I got bored waiting for the rescue party. Rescued myself instead."

Then he collapses. Monroe catches him and hoists Miles' right arm over his shoulder, trying to ignore the giddy feeling of relief. "Some help here?"

Rachel takes Miles' other side and together they half-carry, half-drag him all the way back to camp. Charlie offers to take over if they get tired, but he's not ready to let go, needs to keep touching Miles to reassure himself that he's here, that he's with them, that he's alive.

"It's okay," Rachel says, sounding out of breath, and he isn't entirely sure whether she's responding to Charlie's offer of assistance or if she's talking to him. "We've got him."

* * *

They take turns at Miles' bedside while he recovers.

It's nothing they discuss, it just happens. After Gene and her patched Miles up, Rachel sits watch over him for hours, barely able to keep herself awake.

"Go get some rest," Monroe quietly tells her, the second day. Rachel startles. She didn't hear him come in. "I'll stay with him."

He puts his hand on her arm. There's still a part of her that wants to shrug it off, that doesn't want him anywhere near her or near Miles, but she's tired and his touch is warm and more gentle than what she thought him capable of.

She gets up and brushes a kiss against Miles' fever-hot, damp forehead. Finds herself squeezing Monroe's shoulder on her way out, a gesture that says all the things she can't make herself voice. It's _thanks for helping me bringing him home_, and _hang in there_, and _keep him safe while I'm gone_.

* * *

Miles' fever breaks the fifth day. He's back on his feet faster than he should be, back to making googly eyes at Rachel and sniping at Bass and being an ungrateful bastard and all-around pain in the ass who has no fucking clue how close they came to losing him or what it would have done to them. What it _has_ done to them.

Monroe gets angry and drunk and picks fights with Connor and Charlie because he doesn't quite feel up to picking fights with Rachel and he's too relieved to have Miles back to fight with him just yet.

He watches them together, talking in hushed whispers and touching and smiling, and the old jealousy's still there, prickling under his skin like needles, but it's dulled now. He can't shake off the image of Rachel crouching on the ground with Miles' blood all over her shaking hands, her unsteady voice when she agreed that they'd find Miles and he'd known that she didn't believe her own words.

Rachel looks up and their eyes meet over the distance. He doesn't look away.

* * *

When Miles wakes up, it's the middle of the night and Monroe is sitting in a chair in front of his bed, silently watching him.

"What the fuck, Bass?" he hisses into the darkness, unnerved and confused as hell. The unblinking stare doesn't waver.

Curled up beside him with her head pillowed on his arm, Rachel stirs. She looks up and Miles expects her to raise hell when she finds Bass in their room, braces himself for the rage and the anger and the vicious volleys of accusations.

The quietness of her tone hits him like a bullet even before the words do the same all over again. "Come to bed."

Endless seconds trickle by until Bass moves, until he stands and pulls his shirt over his head and slips under the sheets on Miles' other side. Too close and not close enough, until he shifts and the length of Bass' body is plastered against him. He's warm and solid and Miles' entire body _aches_ with how much he missed him. It's been too long, and he wants this too much to be real, so badly that can't quite bring himself to trust it.

"Should we talk about this?" he asks cautiously, like he's talking down a volatile suicide bomber with a grenade in his hand.

Monroe tenses. "Probably," he admits. He, too, sounds wary.

On his right, Rachel makes an impatient, displeased noise, not entirely different from the ones she used to make before the Blackout, when Miles' phone woke them up in the early hours of morning and Bass was on the other end, drunk and desperate, keeping Miles awake until daybreak. "Not now." Her voice is rough with sleep but leaves no room for argument. She burrows closer against him. "Tomorrow."

Miles decides that he can live with that.

End.


End file.
